3-D yourself!
Making your own 3-D visuals takes only little bit of precision and image editing skills. With these instructions you are sure to succeed. To marvel the 3-D vision, you’ll need a pair of goggles, though.
Anaglyph image from ChemistryLab Gadolin. The image is 3-dimensional when viewed with 3-D goggles. Image: Elisa Lautala.
Anaglyph images are created with two pictures that are taken couple of centimetres apart from each other horizontally. The most important key to success here is that the target stays the same, and the movement is only horizontal, not vertical nor distant.
These two images, also known as stereo images, one for each eye, create a 3-D effect when layered on top of each other and viewed through 3-D goggles.
Taking the pictures
To achieve the best results, use a tripod under your camera to avoid vertical fluctuation. If you don’t own one, use your imagination to steady the camera in other ways.
Choose your target and view angle as you wish and take the first picture. Then move the camera slightly to the side, and take another picture. The distance should be approximately the distance between the eyes.
At this point it is crucial that the direction of the camera and focus of the lens do not change other than horizontally.
Now, you have two pictures that give a slightly shaken impression when layered on top of each other and viewed with bare eye.
Creating the 3-D image
The following instructions are for creating anaglyph images with Adobe Photoshop. You can also use other image editing software, but the menus in them might be slightly different.
Open the first picture you took in the image editing software and remove the green and blue channels from the picture. With Photoshop, you can do this by choosing first Image then Adjustments and Levels. Choose Green and Blue from Channel menu and change the value into 0.
Picture without green and blue channels. Photo: Elisa Lautala.
Then open the second picture and accordingly remove red channels from the picture (in Photoshop: Image->Adjustments->Levels->Channel->Red->0).
Picture without red channels. Photo: Elisa Lautala.
Copy and paste one picture on top of the other. The picture on top has to be a separate layer (Photoshop does this automatically). Then make the top layer transparent by choosing Screen from Layers, or by adjusting Opacity into 50%.
And there you have your very own 3-D image. 3-D goggles with red and cyan lenses filter the images apart. The red lens shows everything red and the cyan shows everything green and blue, but the eyes perceive the vision in normal colours and in three dimensions.
Tip: You can improve your image with Photoshop’s Move Tool.
Elisa Lautala works as web editor for University of Helsinki's Faculty of Science. Elisa likes all kinds of cultural events, good books, warm weather, and aqua-jogging.